


Routine

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Monsters Play Games [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Caretaking, Coming Untouched, Complicated Relationships, Consensual Kink, Dom/sub, Hair-pulling, Kink Negotiation, Kissing, M/M, Massage, Messy, Power Dynamics, Praise Kink, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexual Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:10:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: “You’re so wonderful, like this,” Martin said in a quiet voice, standing behind Jon’s chair. “You’re so beautiful. So trusting. It makes me so happy, to see you so relaxed.”Jon’s breath hitched in his throat, and Martin slid his hands into Jon’s hair on either side of his head, beginning to press the pads of his fingers into Jon’s scalp, massaging it. Jon stuttered out a little noise that was almost a moan, his head tipping back into Martin’s fingers.“You’d like it if I had you take care of me, wouldn’t you?” Martin asked, pressing his thumbs down on a tense spot and smiling slightly when Jon sighed, his eyes closed, his head relaxing into Martin’s hands. “You’d like to take care of me, but you never know how. Would you like that, Jon? If I told you exactly how to make the tea, exactly how to massage my shoulders, what to bring me? If I had you kneel at my feet and keep my lap warm?”
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: Monsters Play Games [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1578574
Comments: 74
Kudos: 884





	Routine

Their lives were not normal.

Every day, they’d go to work at the Institute. Jon was getting the Archives into a proper order, now, although they were still a mess. It was actually coming along in leaps and bounds, Martin thought, between the two of them and Basira. Daisy was… Daisy was alright, Martin thought.

She wasn’t as feral as she’d expected to go. She was trying to control it, and she usually let Basira take charge of the important decisions. Basira didn’t like it, but—

Jon would read statements, and occasionally, when a volunteer came in, he’d be able to take one… live. Martin still didn’t like to be in the room when Jon read statements, but he usually supervised when he took one from someone off the street.

Basira didn’t like that, either. She was _right_ not to, Martin knew that, Martin knew that she didn’t like it all, except that Jon was better at controlling himself, now that he got live statements now and then, as well as pre-written ones. And Jon was looking healthier than he had in a long, long time – he’d put on weight, and his skin didn’t have that weird, unhealthy pallor anymore. It didn’t _glow_ or anything, but he looked well, under his scars and his prematurely greying hair.

He was sleeping better, too, and although there were still slight shadows under his eyes, the heavy bags from before had smoothed out a bit, faded away.

Jon was a monster, now. It was what it was.

And Martin—

Every day, they’d go work at the Institute. Martin would make tea, would get on with some of the archival work, although Basira took the bulk of it. Elias actually let Martin do some of the minor paperwork, now and then – just the little things, but it was still nice to be trusted with more than he’d had.

He wasn’t trying to steal Martin’s body, any longer. At least, Martin didn’t think. He was still Elias – he was still a prick. But it was different, now.

Martin slipped into the Lonely, sometimes.

It didn’t feel good, like it used to, didn’t wrap him up in its chilly, comforting blanket and threaten pleasantly to drown him. It just felt distant and a bit uncomfortable, and weirdly empty, knowing that Peter wasn’t there anymore. It was useful, when he wanted to avoid someone, to slip through the Archives unnoticed, but that was all it was, now – a useful tool, with no intimate connection tangled up in it.

He could put other people there, too, though, and he got the impression, sidling under his skin like an uninvited guest, that if he did do that, their loneliness would feed him.

He wasn’t like Jon, though.

He didn’t feel like he’d be reliant on it, or like it would replace the real food he ate, that he cooked and Jon politely said tasted perfectly nice. He felt it would be nice, though. He felt like it would feel good, if he put the guilt aside.

Martin was a monster too, now. It was what it was.

Their lives were not normal. But what they were, was routine.

Every day, they’d go work at the Institute. Martin took two days off a week; Jon took two days every two weeks, usually on the same days as Martin’s.

Martin had left his flat, moved into Jon’s, which was too large, in Martin’s opinion, for one person. Jon’s bedroom was big, with a big, leather-framed bed and a beautiful mahogany desk; the spare bedroom wasn’t a spare bedroom, but a library full to the brim with neatly organised books, and even more neatly organised records. Martin’s poetry books had joined Jon’s copious amounts of non-fiction, his Tolkien, his complicated sci-fi that made Martin’s head hurt just to read a few pages. Martin got the impression, the longer he spent looking at Jon’s books, that it was the density of the prose he liked, not the content. Every room was nicely furnished, with things that matched – Jon copied the designs out of catalogues, apparently. It made him feel like everything was put-together, when he copied other people’s interior design, because he was too anxious to do it himself.

Martin’s things had sort of slid into place. He had dozens of blankets over the mismatched, cheap furniture in his flat, most of it secondhand stuff he’d bought for cheap. He’d brought his nan’s old rocking chair over to Jon’s, put it in Jon’s library, and he’d brought over his mum’s old ottoman to place at the bottom of Jon’s bed. Their bed.

The rest – the battered old chest of drawers, the wardrobe that threatened to topple into pieces if you leaned anything on it, the three-legged coffee table, the rest, he threw out, or donated. But the blankets? The blankets came over. They all started off folded into the ottoman, but they started to migrate, little by little. One of the patchwork quilts was laid over Jon’s expensive silk sheets; another was hung over the back of the rocking chair. One of the fleece blankets was set on the seat. Others ended up over the back of Jon’s leather couch and chairs, because Martin didn’t like the way it stuck to his skin when he curled up on it, and he preferred to sit on a blanket.

Jon never complained. He would actually _fetch_ a blanket, if he thought Martin was cold. There was a routine to it.

“Jon,” Martin said some mornings, when he came in from running errands and Jon was curled up tightly in a ball on the couch or the chair, cold, but not yet reaching for a blanket himself. He’d wrap it around himself when Martin prompted him, though, always with a slightly bashful smile.

There were other routines.

Martin wasn’t comfortable with the bright lights and crowds of people and long, meandering aisles of the supermarket, intended to encourage you to get lost so that you’d spend more money while hunting for whatever it was you wanted, so groceries were delivered every Saturday morning at eight o’clock in the morning.

On the mornings when Jon was working, he’d help unpack it all, and even though it was his flat, even on the first day, he let Martin direct where things should go. Martin had reorganised the cupboards, after he’d moved in, because Jon wasn’t actually as organised as he should be, as you would think he might be.

He liked things to be _just so_, but at home, he wasn’t great at making them that way.

“Jon,” Martin said, “don’t load the dishrack like that. Put all the bowls together so that there’s space for the plates.”

“Oh,” Jon said, loosely holding a bowl in his hands, and he glanced at Martin, a tiny ghost of a smile pulling at his lips, before obeying.

It was little things like that. Routine things.

“Jon,” Martin scolded, sleepily, more jokingly than seriously. “Use the coaster.”

Jon glanced at the end table, at the glass of water he’d set unthinkingly down on the wooden surface, beside the coaster rather than on top of it. He looked surprised to see it, and he shifted the coaster to the side with the edge of the glass, placing it neatly down on the plastic edge.

He glanced to Martin, then, something expectant, hungry, in his expression. “Sorry,” he said lowly. His book was settled on his knees, reading by the light from his lamp.

“It’s okay,” Martin said, feeling the weird flip in his belly, and he rolled over in bed, closing his eyes. “Don’t stay up too late, Jon. Try to lie down by one.”

A moment’s pause. “Alright,” Jon said.

The funny thing was, Martin was pretty sure he did.

\--

Jon didn’t like labels.

“So, you’re— I mean, you know, everyone sort of gossiped about… Not that I joined in, exactly, I was just curious, and you, you’re, I, that is to say, you’re, you know. Asexual, right?”

Jon stared at him, blankly. “What?”

“You don’t like sex,” Martin said. “Or— Or Georgie said that you, um, didn’t, according to Basira. And you haven’t… I mean, you know, we’ve been living together for three months now. On top of the months in Scotland. And you haven’t even— I mean, I’ve never noticed you, erm, wank, even. Let alone…”

Martin’s tongue, stubborn, was no longer working.

It was a little past ten at night. Jon had been sat up reading, and Martin had vaguely made attempts on a sudoku before dropping it aside, and now he was lying on his side, looking up at Jon with his head rested on stacked pillows and a few blankets thrown over himself. It wasn’t that it was that cold in Jon’s apartment – it was a little chilly in the mornings sometimes, but it kept heat well. It was the weight that Martin liked.

Jon looked at Martin for a long moment, and then he set a bookmark neatly between the pages of his book, gently setting it aside. He flicked off the light, and Martin kept looking at him where he sat back against the pillows in the dark, barely illuminated by the scant light that peeked in through Jon’s blackout curtains, from the nearest streetlamp outside.

“I don’t mind it,” Jon said to the darkness. His voice was low and surprisingly nervous. “Sex. It’s… fine. It’s alright. I do, erm, I do wank, at times. In the shower, usually. It’s… It’s maintenance.”

“You just— You’re just not attracted to people?”

“I’m attracted to you.”

“But just, you know, romantically. Not sexually.”

“What’s the difference?” There was impatience in Jon’s tone now, irritated impatience.

“Er, well, I suppose romantic attraction is normally defined by—”

“I don’t need an explanation,” Jon bit out, sounding frustrated, and he shifted to lie down on his side, facing Martin, so that Martin could see the shine of his eyes in the darkness. “Georgie explained this to me back in university. Romantic attraction is different to sexual attraction, and some people like to have sex but don’t feel attracted, or feel attracted but don’t like sex, all these different words, et cetera. But what’s the difference, really? What does it matter the— the specifics of what I feel, what neurochemical responses your proximity triggers, what buttons you push, to you? Doesn’t it matter enough that I like you? That I want to be close to you? That I want you to want to be close to me?”

He sounded so… _desperate_.

“I do want to be close to you,” Martin said lowly.

“Go on, then,” Jon said, spitefully. “Tell me what labels _you_ want to tell me you use.”

Martin didn’t let it rile him, just said, “I mean, I’m gay. Romantically, sexually. I like men.”

“What, that’s all?” Jon demanded. He didn’t raise his voice, but his tone was tight, and sharp, as though Martin had backed him into a corner. “The rest of the alphabet soup isn’t hot and ready to be poured down my throat?”

“I don’t understand why you’re angry at me,” Martin said, and Jon huffed out a breath, pressing his face hard into the pillows, and Martin put out a hand, resting his palm on Jon’s skinny hip. "And if you don't mind, I'd rather you not call it that. You're not being fair."

“I’m not,” he said lowly, still tense, but not quite as irritated. “Just… I spent quite a long time, Martin, around people who wanted me to use the right words. I like words that describe places, things, people – you like words. You paint with them, you make things with them. You’re a poet, aren’t you? I’m not. I don’t want to describe what I feel inside, I don’t want to express things, I don’t want to tell people about my _inner feelings_. It doesn’t matter.”

“Sorry,” Martin said. “I wasn’t trying to bully you into using… That isn’t what I meant to do.”

Jon was silent, but his hand moved, fingers brushing the collar of Martin’s pyjamas.

“We can have sex, if you want to,” Jon said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were… It didn’t occur to me that you were missing it.”

“Yes, it did,” Martin said. “You were just hoping I wouldn’t bring it up.”

“Yes, it did,” Jon admitted. “I wasn’t _frightened_. It’s just… It’s a lot of effort.” There was an exhaustion in his voice that Martin hated to hear, and he wriggled closer, pressing their noses together, tangling their fingers. “And I didn’t want to have to— Or say that I wasn’t interested, and…”

“I like sex,” Martin said, swallowing when Jon flinched. “But it’s not a priority. I won’t die without it. I, erm. I wasn’t actually asking because I wanted to have sex. I wouldn’t want to—I’m not going to leave just because you don’t want to.”

“Oh,” Jon said. A little of the tension melted out of his stiff shoulders. “Then— Why…?”

“Sometimes,” Martin said, “you… Sometimes I tell you to do things, and you relax. Happy. I… There’s lots of people who are ase— who aren’t really interested in sex, but who like, um. You know. Kink. It doesn’t have to be sexual. I just want to make you happy.”

“I’m happy,” Jon said immediately. “And no offence, Martin, but I think I would have an inkling by now if I were into being chained up and whipped.”

“It’s not all like that,” Martin said lowly. “Won’t you let me— Let me try it with you, Jon. Just a little bit.”

“I trust you,” Jon said, slightly hoarsely. “But I don’t see how… It’s sexual. Kinky things. Right?”

“Not necessarily,” Martin said. “We kiss sometimes, don’t we? And that’s not… sexual. Erm, I know I get hard, sometimes, but it’s not sexual for you. It’s just… nice.”

“I trust you,” Jon said again, and then kissed him.

They kissed for a while after.

\--

“Sit down, Jon,” Martin said lowly, and Jon did without complaint, sinking down into the armchair. He was only wearing his pyjamas, and Martin couldn’t help but admire the sharp edges of Jon’s collarbones, the graceful (scarred) turn of his ankles and his feet, his hands where they folded in his lap. “I want you to do just what I say. Can you breathe for me?”

“Not just for you,” Jon said. “If I stopped, it would be unpleasant for me too.”

“Don’t,” Martin whispered. “Don’t be flippant, Jon.”

Jon went very quiet, and when Martin started counting in his breaths, the inhalations and the exhalations, Jon went with the rhythm Martin set, even though it was longer and slower than he tended to.

“You’re so wonderful, like this,” Martin said in a quiet voice, standing behind Jon’s chair. “You’re so beautiful. So trusting. It makes me so happy, to see you so relaxed.”

Jon’s breath hitched in his throat, and Martin slid his hands into Jon’s hair on either side of his head, beginning to press the pads of his fingers into Jon’s scalp, massaging it. Jon stuttered out a little noise that was almost a moan, his head tipping back into Martin’s fingers.

“You’d like it if I had you take care of me, wouldn’t you?” Martin asked, pressing his thumbs down on a tense spot and smiling slightly when Jon sighed, his eyes closed, his head relaxing into Martin’s hands. “You’d like to take care of me, but you never know how. Would you like that, Jon? If I told you exactly how to make the tea, exactly how to massage my shoulders, what to bring me? If I had you kneel at my feet and keep my lap warm?”

“By the sounds of it, _you’d_ like it,” Jon said, and Martin pulled his hair. He did it hard, harder than he meant to, but Jon whimpered out a noise and went even _more_ relaxed, his hands thrown into the air but not moving to grab or grasp at anything, just thrown vaguely forward, as if searching for purchase but not trying too hard to find it.

“I told you not to, with the sarcasm,” Martin said lowly, seriously. “I meant it, Jon. You can tell me to stop, if you need to, but don’t snap at me.”

“Sorry,” Jon said.

“But you did like that, didn’t you?” Martin asked. “When I pulled your hair.”

“It’s… Yes,” Jon said. “I liked it.”

“Good,” Martin said, tugging more gently before going back to massaging his scalp, and then he slid his hands lower, down to the back of Jon’s neck, working on the tension there. Jon shivered, pressing his thighs together, his hands clenching, unclenching. “You’re _beautiful_.”

“That’s not true,” Jon said, but he said it breathlessly, and Martin slid his thumbs down either side of Jon’s spine, feeling hot satisfaction pool in his belly at the way Jon lowly moaned. “That hurts,” he said, tone husky. It wasn’t a complaint.

“You like it,” Martin said. “You like the pressure. You like the ache, and the heat that’s there afterward, the warmth that seeps through your muscles.”

“Mmm—”

Jon’s thighs pressed tighter together, his knees, and then his hands went up, catching Martin’s wrists.

“I’m, um,” Jon said. Swallowed.

“You’re hard,” Martin said softly, and Jon nodded, a little bit frantically. “Do you want to— do you want to stop?”

Jon shook his head, and Martin realized, leaning forward, that his eyes were closed. Had they been closed the whole time? Did it help? Martin wasn’t sure, wasn’t certain, but maybe Jon would be happier next time, with a blindfold, with—

“I didn’t normally,” Jon said, “I always thought… People would get frustrated.”

“I’m not frustrated,” Martin said, and slid his hands down lower, with Jon’s hands still loosely curled around his wrists. He scratched his nails a little down Jon’s shoulders through the flannel, making him shiver and drop his grasp away, and then he started to massage Jon’s shoulders. “You’re so incredible, Jon. I can’t believe how lucky I am, to have you like this under my hands, I love having you like this. So gorgeous. So _wonderful_—”

Jon squeaked.

He pressed his knees even more tightly together, drawing them up slightly, and he choked out, “Martin, _please_—”

“You don’t want me to touch you there,” Martin said softly, his voice quiet, deliberate, even though his cheeks were burning hot and he was hard in his own jeans, his prick straining against the fabric. “You just want me to keep— Keep talking…?”

“You said it wasn’t sexual,” Jon said.

“Sorry,” Martin said. “I didn’t think it would be. Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” Jon said, nodding, both hands clutching at one of Martin’s wrists and _gripping_, so tightly that Martin thought he might have bruises, later. “Yeah. Martin, Martin, this is really… I don’t usually, this isn’t, for me—”

“You’re _brilliant_, Jon,” Martin said, and dug his nails into Jon’s shoulders, felt his mouth go dry and his heart skip a beat when Jon’s whole body _jerked_. “I love you so much, I just want to take care of you, show you how much I want you, I want you so much, just want to look after you and see you—”

Jon’s hips jumped, and he moaned, digging his nails into Martin’s wrists as Martin slid his hands all the way down his back, having to lean over the back of the armchair to do it, burying his nose in Jon’s hair.

“I want to watch you come,” Martin said softly, the words brushing right against Jon’s ear, and Jon sobbed out a noise that made Martin’s whole body thrill. He kept massaging, kept rubbing, kept murmuring praise into Jon’s ear, kept telling him how wonderful he was, how beautiful, how much Martin cherished him—

It took a long time, but the fact that he came at all, with Martin just _talking_ to him, and rubbing his back?

Afterward, Martin carried Jon into the shower and took him under the hot spray, sitting on the chair Jon had put in his bathroom, for the days when putting too much pressure on his bad leg was beyond him. Martin didn’t scrub at him, just rubbed a soaped cloth gently over his neck, his chest, his thighs.

“That was amazing,” Martin said beneath the spray, nuzzling his nose against Jon’s neck. “You’re amazing.”

“You didn’t come,” Jon said, guilt dripping from his voice. “Don’t you want me to, um—”

“Maybe later,” Martin said. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”

Jon kissed him, fervently, desperately, all lips and tongue and shaking hands, and Martin kissed him back, pulled his hair and shivered when Jon moaned. “I wasn’t lying,” Jon said against Martin’s mouth. He said it sharply, desperately. “I wasn’t lying about not liking sex. I’ve never had anything like this before, I’ve never—”

“I know,” Martin said placatingly. “I know. Do you want to get a Chinese?”

“Just like that?” Jon asked, his lips parted. “You bring me to orgasm by murmuring nice things in my ear and— And touching my back, carry me into the shower, and then we just sit down and eat our chow mein like it’s nothing?”

“It’s not nothing,” Martin said. “Just that you’re shaking a bit. I think eating something will help.”

“You’ve done this before,” Jon said.

“A few times,” Martin admitted.

“Will you— I never asked if you wank,” Jon said. “I… know that you do. I haven’t watched, just, I know that you, sometimes. You do it when I’m not home, so I won’t feel pressured.”

“Yeah,” Martin said.

“I wouldn’t feel pressured,” Jon said. “I wouldn’t mind watching. I’d like to. Watch. Especially if you’re going to wank over this.” Martin’s expression must have shown something – curiosity, or want, because he blurted out, “I don’t want to touch. I don’t like the mess. But I like to… This is why I don’t like the labels everyone’s so obsessed with. They never _fit_. And sometimes people think if I want to watch, that I want to be involved, too, or that I might also… And that isn’t it. But I’d like to see the look on your face. The way your body relaxes, after.”

They sat under the shower for a while longer, Jon’s eyes closing shut again.

“Chinese?” Martin asked again, and Jon nodded, leaning forward, pressing his face against Martin’s chest.

“Why are you acting like this is all so normal?” Jon asked.

“We’re not normal,” Martin said. “Our lives aren’t normal. But this— This is, actually. This is routine.”

“Chinese,” Jon said with finality, and a shakiness to his voice, “then I watch you come.”

Martin shivered, and Jon smiled at him under the spray of the shower, slightly weakly.

“Martin,” Jon said. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Martin murmured, and reached up to turn off the shower.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Feel free to hit up [my ask on Tumblr.](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask) Requests open.
> 
> I have a Magnus Archives discord! [Join here!](https://discord.gg/c9aZWDz)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Show Me How to be Gentle (Thank You)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25327243) by [nocctem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nocctem/pseuds/nocctem)


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